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Revised Commonwealth Games Medal Tally

As the 2014 Commonwealth Games come to end have you ever wondered how fair the playing field is?

Most members of the Commonwealth are developing countries and many are small islands. Only a few countries, like the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, are rich enough and have sufficiently large populations to have well nourished populations that have time to hone their skills in competitive sports. This significantly reduces the competition at the top of the medal tally. For example, to illustrate the inequality between Commonwealth countries compare the richest and poorest countries. The richest country, Australia, has over 125 times more income per person than the poorest country, Uganda.

Countries rankings would change dramatically if the medal tally were revised to adjust for differences in income per person and population size, as has been done for the table below. This removes disparities in wealth and population and allows for a fairer comparison of how countries have performed.

Rank

Country

Revised Medal Tally

Change in Ranks

1

Nauru

1482

24

2

Samoa

459

15

3

Kiribati

373

23

4

Grenada

253

16

5

Jamaica

148

4

6

Saint Lucia

77

21

7

Kenya

61

1

8

Bahamas

39

10

9

Trinidad and Tobago

38

4

10

New Zealand

27

-5

11

Cyprus

27

1

12

Uganda

26

3

13

Fiji

26

15

14

Cameroon

25

0

15

Isle of Man

24

14

16

Barbados

23

14

17

Namibia

22

2

18

Papua New Guinea

14

3

19

Mozambique

13

3

20

United Kingdom

11

-19

21

South Africa

10

-15

22

Zambia

9

1

23

Australia

9

-21

24

Mauritius

8

7

25

Nigeria

8

-18

26

Botswana

6

6

27

Malaysia

6

-17

28

Singapore

5

-17

29

Canada

4

-26

30

Ghana

4

-6

31

India

3

-27

32

Pakistan

2

-16

33

Sri Lanka

2

0

34

Bangladesh

1

0

Small islands countries and some African countries perform substantially better when the medal tally is revised to take into account income per person and population size. Nauru, Samoa and Kiribati take the top three places because they are middle-income countries with tiny populations and still managed to get five medals between them (including a gold and three silver). While Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada fall to the bottom third of the rankings.